NJ school district says it's $4M in red

Board blames private school transportation

Oct. 2, 2013

The Lakewood school district provides transportation for more than 30,000 students attending 103 different private and public schools. Officials say they're overwhelmed. / Asbury Park Press photo/Margaret F. Bonafide

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Margaret F. Bonafide

Asbury Park Press

LAKEWOOD — The Lakewood School District is broke, in the red by about $4 million — because, officials say, the number of private school students was double what was budgeted for, overwhelming the district with unexpected costs.

Now, Board of Education members say the district cannot provide state-mandated transportation and special education to private school students without help. Parents of private school students, on the other hand, say free school bus transportation is the least they should get for their tax dollars.

Let the finger-pointing begin.

Unable to certify the school district’s budget Monday night, the board has essentially thrown up its hands, saying it can’t pay its transportation and special education bills due to thousands of unanticipated private school students.

“The bottom line is we are broke,” board President Carl Fink said.

The issue revolves around courtesy busing, where the state mandates that any child who lives within 2 to 20 miles of a private school must be bused to that school by the public school district.

In Lakewood, the numbers are huge: The district is now providing transportation for more than 30,000 students attending 103 different schools, including some 5,500 public school children attending six public schools.

This school year, Lakewood’s private school enrollment unexpectedly doubled, adding 5,700 new private school children this year. About 2,000 more private school children will be added to the rosters by June, according to trends.

The Ocean County community’s infrastructure is buckling under the pressure as hundreds of school buses are dispatched daily to transport more than 30,000 students to school, bottlenecking Route 9 in the process, officials said. The ratio of private-to-public students is about 5-to-1; they can attend any school and the district is mandated by the state to transport them if it is within 20 miles of their home.

Further complicating the issue: Private schools offer staggered school openings and departures, rather than standard opening and dismissal times.

The district’s transportation coordinator, Gus Kakavas, has said the district could save $2.5 million in transportation costs if some schools would alter their dismissal times.

But he said his suggestion has been rebuffed by those in the Orthodox Jewish community, whose students make up the bulk of the private school students.

District officials have had little success in addressing transportation issues with the private schools. At school board meetings, parents whose children attend private school say they already pay for their own children to be educated and, if the services are mandated by the state, their children should get what they are entitled to.

When asked about possible reductions in the transportation costs, Moshe Gleiberman, vice president of administration at Beth Medrash Govoha, proposed “convening a task force comprised of leaders of the district and of the private K-12 schools to find reasonable savings and to properly plan for future years.”

“By utilizing the robust data available and with better planning and coordination between the district and the private schools, the district can overcome this challenge,” Gleiberman said..

'Hands are tied'

The state of Lakewood’s finances is not a surprise.

In June the board voted down its own budget, saying it could not afford to do all the things that are state mandated and stay within a set amount. When the board presented the matter to the Ocean County School Superintendent’s Office they were told the board had to pass its budget, so they did, Fink said.

“We knew this was coming,” he said.

Board members say they feel they are trapped by state statutes that require courtesy busing, no matter the cost.

“Our hands are tied by the state statute,” board member Joel Schwartz said. “There is no district like Lakewood and the state needs to look at Lakewood for what it is.”

Despite the lack of funding, “We will continue doing what we are doing,” Schwartz said. “But, we cannot control the growth.”

But state officials say the state can offer little to the district other than a chance to talk.

“The New Jersey Department of Education is open to dialogue on this matter,” said Michael Yaple, a department spokesman.

Sen. Robert Singer, R-Ocean, whose constituents include Lakewood, said there should be a concerted effort between the district and its private school industry to ease the tax burden on all residents.

Children have a right to an education, Singer said. But the private school leaders could do a better job at consolidating the one- and two-classroom schools into a larger building to ease traffic on streets and not take up so many individual properties.

Every property in the township is a permitted use for a school or house of worship, according to the Planning Board President Michael Neiman. Over the past decades, private schools have popped up all over town — in residential neighborhoods, an industrial park and anywhere a small group of children and a teacher can meet — and they qualify as a school and receive state-mandated services. Some private schools have several thousand children.

The private schools have no obligation to provide the district with advanced planning, and the school board is at the mercy of the private students to take them as they come.

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